Rapportive Acquired by LinkedIn

Rapportive announced recently that they have been acquired by LinkedIn.

This is one of those acquisitions that really makes a lot of sense. Hopefully LinkedIn sticks with it and continues to grow the Rapportive product.

I’ve been such a fan of Rapportive for such a long time – it’s an email add on that shows the social media connections attached to the sender of the email that you’re reading right there in your email – simply click to follow them on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc. etc. It’s awesome!

Our vision is to make you brilliant with people. Not just good, not just effective, but actually brilliant. That’s our dream.

Since we accidentally launched, we have relentlessly pursued this vision, integrating LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and your address book right into your email.

During our partnership with LinkedIn, we got to know them very well. We found a great overlap between our visions. We found a high-calibre and extremely driven team. We found, crucially, a “members-first” company: everything that LinkedIn does is about making its members more successful.

In business, partnership is dating — and we went on a lot of dates with LinkedIn. Slowly, but surely, we fell in love.

We are simply thrilled to announce that Rapportive is now part of LinkedIn!

Over the last two years, Rapportive has become an essential product for folks all around the world. When rumours of our acquisition surfaced last week, many asked what was going to happen to the product. Well, we have fantastic news: at LinkedIn, we will support Rapportive, and we will continue to build beautiful products that make you brilliant with people.

The highlight of this journey has been our interactions with you — our amazing users who choose Rapportive day after day. We love you, love you all.

You’ve said some truly wonderful things:

Thank you so much. You’re the reason why we do this.

The Future

We are completely beside ourselves with excitement. I have so much I want to tell you, and so much I want to show you. But I need to restrain myself — there’ll be time for that later. For now, let me leave you with one last thought.

A company, at its core, is a set of beliefs united by a vision. When we founded Rapportive, we had one simple belief: we would build software that you don’t have to remember to use. Our software would be an intrinsic part of the tools you use every day. It would be there when you want it, and out of the way when you don’t.

You can convey this idea in so few words; it is so deceptively easy to describe, but it is sovitally important. Because when you do this — when you build software into the very fabric of the world around us, when you remove friction from the things that people want to do — something magical happens.

You enable people to change their own behaviour. You empower people to become better at what they do. And if you get enough people to do that, you might just change the world.